THIS IS TRUE EVEN IN SAJHA THERE IS N'T THREAD FOR NBA NPlayoffs

Playoffs aren't a big deal

By Kevin Modesti, Columnist

Did you watch the little TV production called the NBA Draft Lottery on Monday? Did you hear Lakers executive Jeanie Buss break up the studio when she joked that she'd rather have a wedding ring than the lucky rock that Phil Jackson sent along with her? Did you see the Milwaukee Bucks' general manager tremble like a drama-school freshman as he showed off the lucky fishing lure some Wisconsinite gave him?
Do you still wonder if pro basketball really needs championship contenders in sexy big cities like Los Angeles instead of just not-ready-for-prime-time backwaters like Milwaukee?

From all accounts from the arenas still lit, the playoffs are going along just fine. Detroit, Miami, San Antonio or Phoenix, somebody will be the NBA champion next month.

But something is missing.

Call it big-city cool. Call it large-market might. Call it a traditional power. Call it a villainous giant.

There's no Boston or Chicago (each knocked out of the playoffs in Round 1), no New York (missed the playoffs for the fourth year in a row), no Los Angeles (missed the playoffs for the first time in 11 years).

And everybody else, you know, is Fresno.

I mean, what's an NBA postseason without a "Beat L.A.!" chant?

Detroit ought to be the big-city heavy of the remaining bunch. Detroit was winning pro sports championships (Tigers, 1907) about 60 years before Phoenix had pro sports. The Pistons' three NBA championships put them fourth on the list of titles won in franchises' current cities, behind the Celtics (16), Lakers (nine) and Bulls (six).

But the Pistons seem more comfortable playing the role of disrespected underdogs that they perfected in knocking off the Lakers a year ago.

Miami thinks it's the new center of sports' cultural universe since the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal. True, an envious fan elsewhere could work up a considerable hatred for Shaq alone. The Heat will be an Eastern Conference force for as long as Shaq keeps himself healthy. (Oops.)

But the Heat should consider winning that vital first championship before strutting around like a sunburned Red Auerbach.

As for San Antonio and Phoenix, well, they're thoroughly admirable, likable, deserving contenders.

That's the problem.

After L.A. gave the rest of the nation a basketball team to despise during the Phil-Shaq-Kobe Bryant era, the sport needs a city to provide that valuable service again.

This will be the first time since Houston's second title in 1995 that the NBA champion will not be a) Chicago or Los Angeles, or b) some team that had the satisfaction of beating Los Angeles in the playoffs on the way to the top.

You have to go back to Washington's triumph in 1978 to find the last time the best team in the NBA wasn't a) Chicago, Los Angeles or Boston, or b) some team that took pride in cutting Los Angeles, Boston or New York down to size during their playoff run.

Remember the NBA's dark days of the 1970s, between the heydays of the Celtics and Knicks and the rebirth of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry? Playoff games on late-night tape delay, empty seats in arenas, drugs and thugs all over the place. Every schoolkid knows the story now that ESPN Classic has reduced every chapter of sports history to a sentence.

It wasn't Magic Johnson and Larry Bird who saved the league. It was Magic and Bird landing with the Lakers and Celtics. The championship had just lost its way and wound up in Portland, Washington and Seattle. If Magic and Bird had gone to Utah and Milwaukee, their impact would have been minute.

Ah, Milwaukee. General manager Larry Harris said his hands were shaking Monday because he didn't expect to win the draft lottery. At least nobody can accuse the NBA of fixing the draw after Milwaukee, Atlanta and Portland received the top three picks and the Knicks and Lakers ended up with the eighth and 10th spots, as the probability charts predicted.

Baseball has the endless tug of war between the Yankees and everybody else. Basketball has the eternal battle between big cities and cow towns.

It needs both. At last check, nobody's chanting, "Beat S.A.!"

There are enough lovers of the Pistons', Heat's, Spurs' and Suns' relatively pure brand of basketball entertainment to fill every couch in every TV room in a mid-size city. But only a mid-size city.


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Kevin Modesti is a Daily News columnist. His horse racing column appears on Friday. He can be reached at heymodesti@aol.com.
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